


Tu Me Regardes

by himbosamevans



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, M/M, Misunderstandings, any excuse to use that tag, blaine is a dumbass, idiots to lovers, its just. its fun. its lighthearted. good summer fun for everyone, maybe. sort of.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25448440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himbosamevans/pseuds/himbosamevans
Summary: “Ugh,” Blaine says, because Santana is so purposefully difficult sometimes. “There’s this cute guy I see on the train -- we call him French Guy -- and, I just -- you were talking to him. Here. But he only speaks French.”(Or: The one in which Blainedefinitelyisn't a stalker, and Sebastian apparently only speaks French.)
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Sebastian Smythe
Comments: 11
Kudos: 67





	Tu Me Regardes

To preface, Blaine is _not_ a stalker.

It begins when he misses his train to work, and he has to take the later one. It’s not a big deal, not really, because he usually takes an earlier train than necessary in order to grab some coffee before his shift starts (and also because he’s _always_ prepared for occasions exactly like this arising -- he’s just a preparer, it’s ingrained in him, passed down for generations on his mom’s side. That, and he used to be a boy scout). 

So he’s on the later train, and he’s kind of irritated about it, because even though he won’t be late for his shift starting, he also won’t have time to get coffee, and Santana gets violent with him when he doesn’t bring her a muffin for her break. 

One thing he finds himself noticing is how _different_ the people on the later train are. Like, these are the people who let themselves hit the snooze button instead of getting up (Blaine scoffs inwardly, smugly -- he’ll never let _his_ self-will drop that low); these are the people who don’t care about getting a coffee before their shift; these are the people who may or may not have showered this morning in a hurry.

He feels out of his depth. His hand flexes on the rail attached to the ceiling of the train.

He’s roused from his early-morning thoughts by the train pulling to a jagged halt at the next stop over from where Blaine gets on, and a tall, young man in his early twenties boards, talking angrily and loudly into the phone in a different language. 

Blaine can’t really place _what_ language it is, at first -- he really is talking quickly, and with such venom in his tone -- but he thinks it sounds pretty Northern European, like French or Flemish or something. He’s sort of out of breath and flushed across the cheeks, and he throws himself unceremoniously (yet still, oddly, rather elegantly, and Blaine is somewhat jealous of his poise) into one of the train seats, scowling and shaking his head at whoever is on the other line. He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, shutting his mouth again. He hisses some words which transcend language as obvious curses, and then pointedly hangs up the phone, bringing one foot up to rest on the edge of the seat and resting his chin on his knee.

It’s at this point Blaine realises he’s the most attractive man he’s ever seen.

He’s pretty much perfect; he’s tall, that much Blaine realised at first glance, but now that his brain has begun producing cognitive thought once again, he can see that he’s a lot more than that -- all long, lean legs and combed hair and moles and freckles. Blaine’s mouth feels a little dry.

Still, even if one hot stranger is enough to lift his mood again, it’s not really a huge deal. New York is full of hot strangers, ones that speak English and aren’t yelling abuse in a foreign language down the phone. And this isn’t even his usual train. What are the odds of him seeing _this_ _particular_ hot stranger again?

: : :

Very likely, apparently.

He misses his train the next day, too. He forgets all about said hot stranger in his panic over whether Santana will sprinkle rat poison in his lunch when she realises he’s forgone a muffin for her for a second day in a row.

Truthfully, he only remembers the _existence_ of the hot stranger when he climbs aboard to find that he’s already seated on the train, sprawled out across two seats -- which is, of course, a massive pet peeve of Blaine’s, but goddammit if he doesn’t look amazing doing it -- and he’s reading some book.

Blaine categorises it as ‘some book’ because he can’t make out the title. He shuffles into the centre alley of the train and grabs one of the rails from the ceiling again, tilting his head at the cover. He blinks, and then blinks again, not fully assured that he’s not having a stroke until he realises the title is _French_ , and that he’s an idiot. 

He feels a little creepy watching him for a while, especially when French Guy (as Blaine has now dubbed him in his mind) peers over the red cover of the book and unexpectedly makes eye contact with him. Blaine feels his face flush and he looks down and away, and he doesn’t let himself look back over until he gets to his stop, when he turns and glances in French Guy’s direction as he steps through the automatic doors, and they make eye contact again. He bites his lip all of the 2 minute walk to the store he works at.

: : :

He begins seeing him more often and more often. Santana is surprisingly lax about the muffins, shrugging and mentioning something about an ad gig she did putting her off of them, and he’s trying to cut down on caffeine (for his skincare routine’s sake), so he allows himself fifteen more minutes sleep in the morning, and he takes the later train.

The thing about him seeing French Guy more often, is that it’s making him creepier and creepier. Blaine had honestly thought he’d hit his creepy peak in high school when he’d had a crush on Sam -- he’d felt insane amounts of guilt over that one, and he didn’t even make a pass at him or anything -- but no. A sighting of French Guy making his morning? This is certainly his creepy peak.

He tells Tina about him drunkenly, one night, recalling his pretty face and cheekbones and athletic body. Tina calls him a stalker, and he just lets it roll off his back. Maybe she’s right. Or maybe she simply doesn’t understand the refreshing allure of French Guy.

He quickly grows to despise himself for this drunken confession when it becomes a household inside joke, and Sam starts buying croissants and leaving them randomly about the apartment for him to find. It’s a disaster and there are crumbs everywhere, and Blaine hates his friends.

: : :

The first time he sees him outside of the train, he’s grabbing lunch with Tina at the canteen in the middle of campus.

“All I’m saying,” Tina says, leaning over to take another fry from Blaine’s plate. He pushes his tray towards her a little more; the cafeteria workers are always generous with his portions, ever since he brought the staff some cookie-cutters as a Christmas gift.

“No, seriously, hear me out,” Tina says, even though he hadn’t interrupted her, “all I’m saying is that why would they have written _18_ like that if it wasn’t about Harry and Louis?”

“I think you’re reading too much into it,” Blaine says, wrinkling his nose. “Didn’t Ed Sheeran write that song?”

“For Harry and Louis,” Tina clarifies, nodding. She ignores his first comment. “I mean, they met when Louis was eighteen, so it’s just —“

“Wait, Tina. Shut up. Wait.” Blaine interrupts, moving his head so he can look over her shoulder a little more. That can’t be right. He must be seeing things.

“What? Don’t try and silence me, this is —“

“No, Tina, seriously. Shut up,” Blaine waves an impatient hand at her, hovering above his seat and craning his neck. “It’s French Guy.”

“What?” Tina immediately whips her head around, her hair spiralling around her like an ombré halo. “Where?”

“Be subtle!” Blaine hisses, dropping back in his seat and grabbing her arm. “I don’t want him to see us.”

“Where?” Tina repeats, but she turns back to look at Blaine, lowering her chin and her voice to a whisper. 

“He’s --” Blaine pauses to look again. “He’s over by the checkout. He’s buying like, a muffin or something.”

“What? Why? Muffins aren’t even French.”

He pulls his gaze from French Guy to look at Tina in bemusement. “That’s not -- oh, shit. He’s coming this way.”

Tina’s eyes go wide, and she pushes the tray of fries further onto Blaine’s side of the table. He narrows his eyes at her. 

“Act natural,” he whispers, taking a fry and beginning to chew very slowly. To Tina, ‘acting natural’ apparently means sitting shockingly still and waiting apprehensively for French Guy to pass their table.

Which he does -- Blaine avoids eye contact at all costs, while Tina’s eyes pan over him mechanically from where she’s sitting. He passes their table and rounds the corner towards the exit of the canteen, and Tina lets out a breath.

“Oh my god, he _is_ cute,” she whispers.

Blaine nods. “I know. I thought you knew about my spectacular taste.”

“He was holding textbooks. He must be an exchange student.” Tina splays her hands on the table in excitement of her new discovery. “Oh my god,” she repeats, “maybe we’ll see him around more often.”

: : :

Blaine does see him around more often.

He sees him walking between lecture halls, holding textbooks or scrolling on his phone. He sees him eating at the canteen and studying on the campus green with papers strewn about him. He nearly bumps into him in the library one day, and he has to duck behind a bookshelf and pretend to be engrossed by the academic economics magazines.

It makes his life better and so, so much worse.

: : :

One Saturday, he’s having a particularly boring day at work. 

Truthfully, _any_ day at work for him could be considered particularly boring -- when you work at a department store who’s major demographic is middle aged white women, this is often the case -- but he’s not even getting to do something fun, like stand at the fitting rooms and give people plastic numbers and silently judge their clothing choices. He’s just been resigned to the floor.

He looks down at the shirt in his hands; it’s pretty ugly. He doesn’t understand much of women’s fashion, but why anyone over the age of 10 would wear a shirt with a sequinned star on it, he doesn’t know. He rounds the corner, wrinkling his nose, and when he looks back up -- holy shit.

Santana is grinning up at French Guy, showing him something on her phone. French Guy, in the middle of the department store he works in. French Guy leans in a little to see her phone better, and then he laughs too, scrunching his nose at whatever’s on it, and turning back to Santana, who’s still grinning amusedly but also a little smugly, now. Blaine’s hands fist the shirt in his hands, crinkling it. 

“ _French Guy,_ ” he whispers to himself, and then he blinks and looks around, because he’s definitely being weird in the middle of the shop floor right now. He shifts on his feet for a moment, watching them speak. He didn’t know Santana spoke French, but he supposes there’s a _lot_ of things he doesn’t know about Santana; she’s enigmatic like that. He might compliment her on her mysterious woman qualities later. 

He wonders for a second if she could get him his number, but then decides that would be too creepy. And, no matter how cute French Guy is, or how desperate Blaine may be, he’s not going to go as far as to communicate with someone solely through Google translate.

He looks down at the wrinkled t-shirt in his hands and he shakes it out, pivoting on his heel to walk around a different way. 

“I didn’t know you spoke French,” Blaine says ten minutes later, when he’s behind the counter taking a drink from his water bottle (to calm down from the shock) and Santana rounds the edge of the tills to join him (to bother him for her own amusement).

“What are you talking about?” Santana says, frowning, reaching for his water bottle to take a drink of her own. He opens his mouth to protest, but he loses his trail of thought when she makes a great show of wiping the mouth of it with the bottom of her t-shirt; it kind of stings, like she thinks he has cooties or something.

“The customer,” he says, like it’s obvious. She continues frowning through her drink. “The -- French customer. You were showing him something on your phone.”

Santana pulls away from the water bottle, swallowing but still frowning bemusedly. “You’re fucking weird,” she says finally, after regarding him coldly for a moment. Blaine sighs exasperatedly.

“Tall? Handsome? Lithe?” he says, gesturing above his head to indicate the tallness. 

“ _Lithe_?” Santana repeats incredulously. “Even your adjective choices are gay.”

“Ugh,” Blaine says, because Santana is so purposefully difficult sometimes. “There’s this cute guy I see on the train -- we call him French Guy -- and, I just -- you were talking to him. Here. But he only speaks French.”

Santana watches him for a second, opening and closing her mouth. Then she smiles slowly. “Yeah. He _does_ only speak French. I take night classes.”

Blaine nods, partly satisfied with the conversation and also just wanting it to be over. He reaches to take his water bottle back.

“You see him on your train?”

“Yes,” Blaine says, a little clipped, because that’s probably the least important part of the story.

“Like, everyday?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Blaine repeats emphatically.

“Interesting.” She smiles again, and Blaine reminds himself he shouldn’t trust Santana with any information. Like, ever.

: : :

He’s forgotten about the exchange with Santana by the next time he sees French Guy, though. It seems to be getting worse, for he now no longer sees him solely on the train or around the NYU campus, but in more and more random places, too. Maybe it’s all just one set of quadruplets. Maybe there’s been a mass exodus of all hot guys from France, and they all just look the same. Whatever it is, he’s invading his safe spaces, and it’s unfair.

His safe spaces include the sheet music store that’s pretty essential to his degree in Music Education, so it’s not even like he can stop coming there. And Sam likes picking up movie scores to make him play, so this affects multiple people in his household.

“Oh my god, Sam, French Guy, 10’o’clock,” Blaine says, darting away from the arrangements of pop music to hide behind Sam.

“What?” Sam says, turning in place, frowning down at Blaine. The edge of the _Star Wars_ piano arrangement collection he’s holding digs into Blaine’s forearm.

“ _French Guy,_ ” Blaine repeats in a whisper, gesturing vaguely at the direction French Guy went in after he entered the store.

“Oh,” Sam says, craning his neck over the displays of sheet music. “Want me to talk to him?”

“What?” Blaine hisses back, feeling a bit panicked. “Are you insane? Are you an insane person, Sam?”

“Well if you’re not gonna do anything about it, then what’s the point in freaking out?” Sam shrugs, like it’s obvious to him. “I took French class in high school, anyway.”

Blaine is frowning at Sam -- because, as much as he loves him, he totally flunked out of French class in high school -- when an awful realisation hits him. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“He’s here. That means -- _oh my god_ \-- that means he must play like, piano or something. Or sing.” He buries his face in his hands. “He keeps getting more and more attractive. This is ruining my life,” he continues, but it’s a little muffled.

“Dude. Your hands. You’re a little muffled.”

Blaine just shakes his head into his palms.

: : :

“Hey, T,” he says into the phone, shuffling a little on the plasticky train seat. The connection is usually pretty bad, but it’s bearable when they’re going over the bridge. “Guess who’s on the train with me?” he asks, looking up to where French Guy is standing -- considerably near him -- on the train, reading another book with one hand and gripping the pole in the middle of the aisle with the other.

“Don’t say French Guy.” Tina replies down the line, the resignation in her voice still wholly detectable through the connection crackle.

“ _Yes,_ ” he gushes, grinning. “French Guy.”

“You’re really creepy, you know that?”

“Coming from you,” Blaine says, frowning. He hasn’t forgotten his case of flu senior year. “There’s no harm in it, Tina. He’s never gonna _know_ \-- I mean, it’s not like I can fucking talk to him, anyway. I don’t have the time to learn French.”

“Well, I was thinking about taking classes —“

“You’re such an enabler!” Blaine interrupts, mock-gasping. “You can’t call me creepy and then encourage me to _learn a language_ for this guy.”

“Wow, egomaniac, much? I wasn’t even going to invite you,” Tina says, and there’s a squeak of the mattress shifting under her weight through the receiver. Blaine imagines she’s lying on her stomach, swinging her legs, like a girl in a 00s romcom. “I was going to suggest me being there as an interpreter for your first date. And then, when you get married and have Euro-American babies, I can be auntie Tina who was involved in your fiery romance from the start.”

Blaine sighs dreamily. “I wish we _would_ have a fiery romance. He’s reading another book. _In French._ Why are intellectual guys so hot?”

“Mike’s pretty intellectual,” Tina says, either because her mind genuinely is preoccupied with her new boyfriend, or because she’s deliberately trying to change the subject. “He’s doing pre-med -- did I tell you?” Blaine narrows his eyes even though she can’t see him.

“When am I gonna meet Mike, anyway? I keep telling you to invite him -- oh, Tina, we’re going into a tunnel; I’ll lose the connection. I’ll talk to you when I’m home, m’kay?”

“Kay,” she says, her voice already becoming cracklier on the other end. “Talk to you later, love you.”

Blaine hums in response, bringing his phone down to his lap and hanging up. When he looks back up, he immediately makes eye contact with French Guy, and butterflies erupt in his stomach again. He smiles a little shyly and awkwardly, fiddling with his phone in his hand and looking back down, pretending to compose a text.

When he looks back up a minute later, French Guy is still staring at him, smiling slightly, his eyes narrowed, head tilted, like Blaine is some kind of unsolvable puzzle or the rosetta stone.

Then he says, “Who’s French Guy?” in a perfect American accent.

Blaine feels like he’s just been punched in the stomach. He feels like he’s going to be sick. Mostly, he just feels angry that he’s spent months curating a dream life in his head with this guy, when he could have just spoken to him all this time.

Despite all of this, what he says is: “You can speak English?”

French Guy raises his eyebrows, and his smile grows into a grin. “Yes. Can you?”

“I thought you only spoke French,” Blaine says helplessly, in lieu of an answer to his question.

“Am _I_ French Guy?” French Guy asks, even though his grin and the glint in his eyes shows that he already knows the answer to the question.

“That depends on what your reaction would be?” Blaine’s stomach feels like it’s doing flips. There’s butterflies climbing up his ribs and into his throat. He smiles weakly.

“Well, hypothetically, if I _were_ this French Guy you were so keenly describing,” French Guy says, looking to the side as if in deep thought, “I should probably get a restraining order.” Blaine can only laugh nervously. 

“But,” French Guy stretches his arms out above his head as he speaks, his thumb keeping his page in his book, and it’s really so unfair that Blaine should still be so attracted to him when he’s being threatened with legal action. “That course of action would of course be the only one I’d take if it was anyone _other_ than the hot guy from my train.”

Blaine bites his lip to stop his grin. “I’m the ‘hot guy from your train’?”

French Guy looks around, gesturing with an open palm. “I can’t see anyone more attractive than you, can you?” French guy shrugs, closing the book fully and holding one hand out. “I’m Sebastian.”

Blaine fights the urge to grin even harder, because, _God,_ is Sebastian not just the perfect name for this guy? “Blaine,” he says, leaning forward to shake French Guy’s -- no, _Sebastian’s_ \-- hand tentatively.

Sebastian sits himself on the train seat next to Blaine. “So you hear strangers speak a foreign language _once_ and you assume they speak no English, instantly?”

Blaine resists the urge to bury his head in his hands. It sounds so much worse than it is. “In my defence, my coworker Santana said you only spoke French. I saw her talking to you at work once.”

Sebastian’s grin grows ten times. “Wait, Santana Lopez? You know Santana?”

“Yeah. She’s kind of a crazy bitch.”

“I know,” Sebastian nods in agreement, “She’s my best friend. I love her.”

Blaine opens and closes his mouth, and smiles again. “I, uh, God, I sound so creepy but -- you go to NYU.”

Sebastian raises his eyebrows. “I do,” he says slowly. “You -- how do you know that?”

“I’m a student there too, so I just see you around,” Blaine assures him. “Not -- it’s not in a weird way. I thought you were an exchange student.”

“I’m not an exchange student; my mom is just French, so I grew up speaking it.” He pauses. “Maybe you should give me your number,” Sebastian says with a nudge of Blaine’s shoulder with his.  “And we can like, study together or something.”

Blaine closes his eyes and silently thanks any God that exists. “Sure.”

: : :

(Epilogue: They do meet up, but they don’t do much studying until the fourth or fifth date -- and even then, the learning that goes down is few and far between. Blaine finally meets Mike, and in exchange gets to introduce Tina and Sam to _his_ new boyfriend. The book Sebastian was reading was Le Grand Meaulnes, and when they finally move in together, they adopt a cat called Yvonne.)

**Author's Note:**

> this was borne out of my avoidance of other wips and the weird longing for public transport that quarantine has given me.. oh come back to me weird smelling metro carriages..  
> also dt elsie (killerleo) for proofreading this for me and being generally hilarious <3  
> find me on tumblr! :)  
> himbosamevans.tumblr.com


End file.
